There have been a great many disclosures of compositions which, when used separately, provide detergency and fabric conditioning benefits. By fabric conditioning is meant improving softness, i.e. making its "handle" or texture more smooth, pliable and fluffy to the touch; and also reducing static "cling" in the fabrics, i.e. destaticizing. Perhaps the most common fabric conditioners known in the art are cationic compounds, especially quaternary ammonium and imidazolinium salts. These compounds are widely marketed for home use in the form of liquid emulsions. They must be added to the home laundry in the rinse cycle, not the wash, because cationic fabric conditioners interact with anionic substances present in the wash, such as anionic surfactants and builder salts, thereby rendering both relatively ineffective. A commercial fabric conditioner of this type is Downy.RTM. The Procter & Gamble Company.
Another type of compound known for this purpose comprises certain tertiary amines, as disclosed in Kenyon, Canadian Pat. No. 1,087,352 issued Oct. 14, 1980 incorporated herein by reference. Clay as a fabric conditioning ingredient is disclosed in Storm et al, U.S. Pat. No. 4,062,647 issued Dec. 13, 1977, incorporated herein by reference.
Certain compositions are already known that provide fabrics with a detergency treatment in a washer combined with a degree of fabric conditioning treatment in a subsequent machine dryer. Compositions of this kind are known in the art as through-the-wash fabric conditioners, and are convenient to use in that they do not require the use of a second product in the rinse cycle or in the dryer to accomplish the fabric conditioning objective. Baskerville, Jr. and Schiro disclose in U.S. Pat. No. 3,936,537 issued on Feb. 3, 1976, incorporated herein by reference. a composition of this type wherein the fabric conditioning agents are quaternary ammonium compounds. A commercial cleaning/conditioning product which has utilized the teachings of Baskerville, Jr. et al is Bold-3.RTM. The Procter & Gamble Company.
Through-the-wash compositions utilizing a mixture of tertiary amines and clay as fabric conditioner are disclosed in Crisp et al, European Patent Publication No. 0,011,340 published May 28, 1980, incorporated herein by reference.
Battrell, in U.S. Pat. No. 4,292,035 issued Sept. 29, 1981, incorporated herein by reference, prepared through-the-wash compositions wherein fabric softening was accomplished by a complex of clay with certain nitrogen containing organic compounds defined as primary, secondary and tertiary amines and their water soluble or water dispersible salts and organic quaternary ammonium, phosphonium and sulfonium compounds.
Another means of providing fabric conditioning was disclosed in Gaiser, U.S. Pat. No. 3,442,692 issued May 6, 1969, incorporated herein by reference, as an article of manufacture comprising a fabric conditioning composition in conjunction with a dispensing means for use in a machine dryer. Preferred articles had the fabric conditioning composition releasably affixed to an absorbent substrate, such as a nonwoven tissue, in the form of an impregnate or coating of cationic fabric conditioning agent. The use of certain polyols, especially sorbitan esters, as auxiliary fabric conditioning agents in products of this kind is disclosed in Zaki et al, U.S. Pat. No. 4,022,938 issued May 10, 1977, incorporated herein by reference. A commercial product that has utilized the teachings of Gaiser and Zaki et al is Bounce.RTM. The Procter & Gamble Company.
Fabric conditioning articles of the Gaiser type wherein the fabric conditioning composition was comprised of certain amine salts are disclosed by Kardouche in U.S. Pat. No. 4,237,155 issued Dec. 2, 1980, incorporated herein by reference. This patent alluded to the possibility of adding these amine salts to the wash cycle or to the rinse cycle of a typical washing operation, and apparently envisaged a softening process taking place during the one or the other of those two processes, respectively.
U.S. patent application Ser. No. 476,651 filed Mar. 18, 1983, now abandoned, invented by Kardouche and Giardina (incorporated herein by reference) discloses and claims a means of utilizing the benefits of amine salts in through-the-wash compositions. Specified amines and carboxylic acids were reacted together to form a melt, which was then chilled to produce discrete nodules. Among the nodulizing processes said to be suitable were prilling, flaking on a chill roll, and cooling in a scraped wall heat exchanger followed by extruding. These nodules were then mixed with conventional detergency and/or stain removal ingredients to make compositions which were added to laundry wash or rinse liquor; which remained trapped in the fabrics when wrung out or spun dry; and which distributed on the fabrics in a mechanical, heated drying process. The result was effectively softened and destaticized fabrics.
Clear distinctions between amines, amides, amine salts, quaternary ammonium salts, and other classes of nitrogen-containing chemical compounds appear in every textbook of organic chemistry. Fieser and Fieser in Organic Chemistry, 2nd Ed., Heath, Boston U.S.A. (1950) point out a number of such distinctions in chapter 10 beginning at page 220, incorporated herein by reference. Amine salts are characterized as typically odorless, nonvolatile solids, even though the amines from which they are derived are odoriferous gases or liquids. The salts are ionic in nature in the solid state, and possess characteristically sharp melting points which are higher than those of the corresponding amines. Low molecular weight amine salts are readily soluble in water and exist in the solution in ionized condition.